Same here. The thing was neat and innovative, but missing the dpad and right stick really brought it down significantly imo. The steam deck got it right - the trackpads are incredibly useful when used as a supplementary feature, but rarely as a full replacement for traditional inputs. Plus the form factor. Dear god the thing was MASSIVE. Incredibly uncomfortable to use and such an awkward shape.
Here’s hoping the leaks come to fruition, because a 2.0 version based on the Deck would be 10/10.
Oh for sure, I get that. It’s not exactly something you can copyright. But when the entire art style heavily leverages stolen assets, that’s not a good look - I imagine they’re stuck redoing nearly everything from scratch just so they can be sure to remove anything that was stolen.
I have zero faith in anything Bungie does though until Pete Parsons bites the curb and the studio becomes developer-owned though so I’m sure something will slip through the cracks
I’m actually almost surprised they didn’t just pull it entirely after this. It’s not like it’s just one or two assets, the entire goddamn art style ripped off that artist.
I wouldn’t day D4 is a good game but I thoroughly enjoyed my time with it. I stopped playing right after VoH came out, and the direction that expansion was taking the game didn’t interest me, but it was a fun time overall. Not a very deep game though and endgame was basically non-existent since everything falls over at that point.
Honestly the collectathon genre as a whole doesn’t hold up much these days. A few modern games pull it off here and there, but going back and trying to play any of the classic Rare titles feels like a slog.
Loved all those games as a kid, and they did a ton to shape the industry, but they don’t really hold up.
I started with Shadowkeep and I got sucked in hard for 5 years. The first year or two I heard these sorts of negative comments here and there, mostly from long-term players, but didn’t think much of it.
Fast forward to this past year, and Revenant is what made me say fuck it and drop the game entirely. I was already sick of the state of the game, powercreep to hell and back, pvp in the dumpster, nonexistent loot, etc etc. But jesus that season was eye-opening. I uninstalled a day after Tomb of Elders launched.
I was also a major completionist - near max triumph score, never missed a day 1 raid from DSC onwards til unfortunate scheduling fucked our SE run, every GM soloed to that point, shit like that. Missing that one single season and a couple shitty little time-limited events was enough to feel like I’d fallen behind, and that was it. Booted up the game once since to check out Heresy, activity was the same shit as always, loot was dogshit, so I checked out right away.
And that’s just the gameplay gripes. Bungie as a studio is toxic as fuck in so many ways and I can never in good conscience support them again.
It took a few years but I finally understand what people were telling me way back when I started.
Even TF2 gave special cosmetics and stuff to existing players when it went F2P ages ago. It’s a standard practice at this point. I sunk 12k hours into D2 until I quit it for good this past fall, and looking back I swear I just notice more and more red flags like this that I hadn’t thought too much about.
Been working on platinums/100% for every single RGG game since Feb last year. Currently on Yakuza 2 (HD PS3 port since it actually has trophies but is entirely in Japanese lmao) and Kurohyou 1. Kurohyou 2 and Kenzan are the last games left after these.
Deltarune Ch 3 and 4 are gonna eat up a LOT of time this week and next
Sunk 20 hours into Nightreign, still haven’t beaten the first big boss because matchmaking is a nightmare. Might revisit this when some friends actually want to run it for once idk. Fun game but one bad teammate can fuck the whole run.
After trying Code Vein because of similar hype and dropping it 2 hours in, I expected the same from this game, but goddamn it’s phenomenal. Absolutely worth playing through. It feels like a love letter to Fromsoft, rather than trying to just do what they do - the inspiration is obvious, but it still feels like its own unique thing.
The entire visual style is also blatantly stolen from an artist who’s been doing it for a decade or more, right down to their artwork and their logo being used in-game.
That’s where I stand on it. Unless Pete Parsons and the rest of c-suite bite the curb and put the actual devs in charge, I’m not touching anything by that studio.
It took 12k hours but I finally stopped clinging on to some sliver of hope that they’d fix the major issues with D2. Quit last November, logged in one time since to check out the new season after hearing good things, logged out as soon as it was glaringly obvious the core issues haven’t changed.
Every single time I check in on friends still playing I just see more slot machines, more power creep, more dogshit ruining pvp, and more bugs. The core changes coming up in their next year look atrocious. Why would I trust them to handle a new game when they’ve been consistently fucking up their only title for years?
What sucks with the entire situation is that the devs themselves are great people who can make some cool shit when given the reigns to do so. But they’re almost never given that chance. Hoping that team branched off to Sony to continue that “gummy bears” thing is given more freedom to cook.
EDIT: I’ll also add on here for anyone feeling the sunk cost fallacy like I did and has put a ton of time into D2 but isn’t happy with the state of things and disappointment after disappointment. Like I said I had 12k hours at the time I quit. Solo GMs, solo Nez, bunch of lowman raids, every weapon that mattered in my vault, 200+ trials cards, etc. I was a small content creator in this space too. I legitimately feel like that game becomes an addiction so fast, I continued to play through both waves of layoffs despite my issues with the studio execs. I wasn’t happy with the state of the game either but kept telling myself “next season will be better” “next dlc will be better” etc. It’s never true. If you’re not happy with the game, take ONE season off, and if you’re the kind of player I was, missing the seasonal offerings and various events will be enough to make you feel like you’ve fallen too far behind to catch back up, and from there the rest of the facade falls apart. Just gotta let it go cold turkey.